needed anything! Its really funny cause all the staff give themselves English sounding names like Frank and James, not really to Chinese but we were already getting the feeling that this boat was trying just a little bit to hard to be westernised, judging by the fact that there was an a sheet up with the evenings entertainment that was on offer for us! We just looked at each other took a deep breath and smiled I’m not sure anybody (the boat was full of westerners) was overjoyed about the fact that we were to be entertained by the waiting on staff who then doubled up as dancers!!! We were wishing we were on the ordinary Chinese passenger boat and not the cruise ship that specialises in catering for overseas visitors! Greg (our leader) had managed to negotiate a beer deal - drink as much as you like for 100 Yuan - great we thought seeing as beer was expensive 30 Yuan for a small can of Western beer but the local beer was the one on offer so we all got a beer with lunch and then the full realisation of the

great beer deal came to light, we had all just paid 100 yuan for 18 bottles of 2.8% local Chinese beer - how gutted were we - and yeah the beer was pretty foul!!! We were beginning to have mixed feelings about this part of our trip already and we had only been on the boat for a couple of hours!!!

The scenery was amazing but everybody on our trip seemed to have mixed feelings about the harsh consequences of the dam, especially when you keep going past the 175m markers (its already flooded up to 135m or 440ft) on the side of the hills - it just seems so wrong to flood such a beautiful place, I’m sure a series of smaller dams would have been a better option. I remember watching a Michael Palin programme and he went through the gorges before any of the flooding took place and he couldn’t comprehend what the place would look like after the flooding and to be honest, I don’t know if its just